"Hunger" is defined here-somewhat vaguely-as lack of
sufficient food in a society or lack of resources to produce a
sufficient amount of food. This article maintains that hunger
is basically caused by non-natural factors in both pre-capitalist
and capitalist societies and that, although the direct causes of
starvation may be natural (floods, drought, etc.), the basic ones
are man-made. These hypotheses are supported by examples from
Ethiopia in the 1960s and 1970s. The choice of a particular
country, in this case Ethiopia, does not imply any appraisal of
its existing politics. In fact, the present government of
Ethiopia cannot be held responsible for the foundations of most
of the economic problems of today. These foundations were laid
during the time of the previous imperial government, and thus the
explanations for them are historical.

The causes of starvation can be divided into two categories:
basic and direct causes. Basic causes are always non-natural and
most often policy-dependent, i.e., they are created by man,
either by the person directly affected (the one who starves), or
more often by characteristics inherent in the economic structure
(mode of production) or by external penetrating forces. In the
absence of basic causes, the direct ones are less harmful; i.e.,
the force of the effect of direct causes depends on the existence
of basic ones. So, for instance, a crop failure due to drought
(direct cause) has less disastrous consequences in more
egalitarian societies than it does in class societies with a high
degree of exploitation (basic cause). An implication of this
approach is that the effects on nutrition (including the effects
on food production, supply, distribution, and prices) of certain
events can be predicted much better than is often acknowledged.
However, this requires an acceptance that political and economic
realities have something to do with human survival.

The early-warning systems (EWS's) which are being used in some
countries to warn of disasters usually ignore these realities.
The information collected is always related to natural phenomena
and usually includes data on rainfall- areas particularly
deficient in precipitation are identified. The data rarely
include political causes of starvation. This weakness in the
EWS's is perhaps understandable, but it can be fatal. Another
drawback, related to the former, is the lack of economic analysis
in the process of data collection. Hence, the technically
advanced and impressive EWS of Ethiopia in 1977 failed to predict
the 1978 famine in time. An economic analysis of a particular
society does not have to be as complicated and costly as is often
indicated by various experts. Indeed, analyses which are too
sophisticated and pretentious are rarely ready before famine is a
fact.

In the five examples given below, the political and economic
causes of hunger and starvation are analysed. The first two
examples are of a general nature and show how both pre-capitalist
and capitalist modes of production hamper economic growth,
thereby making hunger inevitable in the long run and famine
always a risk. They are fundamental to the understanding of the
next two-more concrete-examples, which refer to transition from
one mode of production to another. Irrespective of the possible
economic and social gains of such a transition, certain groups
may suffer to the extent of actually starving. The fifth example
refers to a war economy and its effects on food production and
nutrition; specific examples of the effects of a war economy on
food production are discussed.

OBSTRUCTION OF FOOD PRODUCTION UNDER PRE-CAPITALISM

Pre-capitalist economic systems are all characterized by
stagnation, because of the obstruction of food production. Basic
common features of these primitive community, tributary, feudal,
and other modes of production are a lack of investment in
machinery and other such inputs- i.e., in higher productivity-and
a lack of wage employment. In the feudal system, for instance,
the tillers are allowed to keep for their own reproduction only
some of the food they produce. The surplus is usually handed over
as land rent to the owner of the land and of the means of
production. The tiller can rarely afford to invest with a view to
higher production. Nor are the returns on the surplus reinvested,
but rather they are spent on luxurious consumption or staked in
land speculation, trade, buildings, and other non-productive
activities. Thus, these rigid relations of production between
owner and tiller prevent any development of the productive
forces. Production stagnates or at least does not increase faster
than the population grows. The minimum standard of peasant
survival in combination with the misuse of the surplus result in
poverty and in a poor physical and social infrastructure, high
illiteracy rates, insufficient health and medical facilities, low
nutritional status, high mortality, no margins for safety, and no
resistance to crop failures. Small changes in the
nature-dependent conditions of life, even temporary changes, may
have devastating effects.

The well-known and much-discussed famine in Ethiopia in 1973
struck both agriculturalists in the northern highlands and
cattle-breeders in the lowlands to the east (whose case is
discussed later). The former were typical victims of a stagnating
system similar to the one just described. Their living conditions
had always been marginal, and they had no spare resources. Hunger
was normal, severe undernutrition was seasonal, and starvation
never came as a surprise. Ecologists and many others blamed bad
soils and absolute overpopulation for the famine, but the soil
would have been more fertile and the relative overpopulation (not
absolute, in the Malthusian sense} would not have existed if the
imperial government had not "forgotten" this part of
the country in favour of southern and central Ethiopia.

OBSTRUCTION OF FOOD CONSUMPTION UNDER CAPITALISM

In private or state capitalist agriculture, labour
productivity increases faster than the market grows (total demand
for agricultural products). This is partly due to stagnant
relative labour wages, which in concrete terms means that the
labourers cannot afford to increase their consumption at the same
rate as they increase production. This leads to overproduction
and relative overpopulation {cf. the collapse of the
"Brazilian miracle"). There are plenty of examples of
how capitalist penetration of the agriculture of the third world
results in rural eviction and urbanization. Manpower surplus is
found in towns, on top of seasonal underemployment in the rural
areas. Urban industry wages are kept low ("labour market
economy"), the total purchasing power in urban areas does
not grow in proportion to urban population growth, consumption
above minimum needs is automatically blocked, and so is further
food production for domestic sale. Hence, there is nothing
surprising in the combination of poverty, hunger, and even
starvation on the one hand and food exports on the other -a
reality in many third-world countries, where a section of the
population is too poor to afford even a minimum daily intake of
food.

In the long run, traditional, stagnant agriculture in
combination with population growth has to end up in more and more
frequent famines. Replacing it by an advanced capitalist mode of
production may solve the immediate low productivity problems.
However, as many studies have shown-not least, studies of the so
called green revolution -marginalized people and members of the
lower classes often have to pay a high price for this economic
growth. Moreover, the transition from one system to another
itself is usually painful, as the two following examples from
Ethiopia will show. In both cases, the famine caused by
transition was predicted.

FROM PASTORALISM TO CAPITALISM

This example shows some of the causes of the 1973 famine;
these causes had been analysed and explained to the imperial
government as early as 1971.

North-eastern Ethiopia is inhabited by the Afar people, who
breed cattle, camels, sheep, and goats. They depend on the
naturally irrigated plains along the Awash River for pasture. The
river overflows and floods these plains during the rainy season,
May-September. In the 1960s the river was regulated by a dam and
concessions were given to private investors to start commercial
agriculture in the area (mainly cotton and sugar). The river
flooded less land than before, and much of the best pasture was
occupied by plantations. When international finance capital
entered, the Afar people lost land; in some areas they lost
access to the river, where they water the animals, and the
quality of the pasture declined because of the regulation of the
river. In December 1971 I wrote to the government:

The region under this rapid agricultural development is
inhabited by people who graze their livestock in areas which
are now more and more being taken over by the commercial
farms. This leads to such consequences as overgrazing of the
few areas left for the pastoralists, livestock starvation,
decrease in milk production, undernutrition of the
pastoralists, etc. If the pure economic development continues
at the same pace and with the same objectives without any
improvements for the pastoralists, the whole business will
end up in a predictable situation. [1]

A little more than one year after this was written, the famine
among the Afar people was a fact. Some had been evicted to
rainfed lands and others were forced to crowd on small plots of
land along the river. When rainfall decreased in 1972/1973, they
found themselves in an entirely new situation which they had
never experienced before. They could not escape starvation,
basically caused by the penetration of capitalist agriculture in
a region which used to be entirely dominated by a stagnant and
defenceless pastoralist economy and directly caused by rain
failure.

FROM FEUDALISM TO SOCIALISM

The important transition discussed in this example- including
the badly needed land reform of April 1975- explains the 1978
famine to some extent.

Six years after the above-mentioned paper had been presented
to the imperial government (with no immediate effect), another
similar document was submitted to the new military government.
This paper was an analysis of the situation in each region of the
country with respect to political and economic realities, such as
the effects of the land reform and the effects of the wars on
third parties. The following extracts from the paper primarily
refer to the peasant economy and urban-rural contradictions:

The 1973 famine in Wollo and Tigrai did not come as a
surprise to those who predicted it or who saw the gradual
introduction to it. Nor did the ravaging effects of the
famine come as a surprise to those who withheld information
about it. This paper, which is an expression not only of the
observations of the author, is an attempt to show that there
is an inevitable risk of a famine in Ethiopia, possibly of
the same magnitude as the one of 1973. By acknowledging this,
the risk may be diminished and a disaster may be avoided....

Before the land reform, peasants in the southern and
central parts of Ethiopia were forced to give up a surplus
for the market without compensation and had to survive on a
low calorie intake. With the cessation of this type of
exploitation they now decide over the utilization of their
total produce. So, without increasing production, they can
eat more and better than before, which obviously results in a
smaller surplus for the market....

"The Ethiopian scissors" are very similar to the
Russian ones, though important differences should not be
denied [of the decline in productivity in the Soviet Union
after 1917, and the New Economic Policy of 1921]. The low
purchasing power of the rural population and the
underdeveloped market relations between towns and countryside
hampered domestic industry production growth of consumer and
capital goods before 1974/75. This is one important
explanation to the massive urban unemployment in Ethiopia.
Before the political change [of 1974], the resultant urban
poverty was, however, to some extent neutralized by
comparatively low food prices-made possible with the heavy
exploitation of the peasantry. Thus, in exchange for this
cheap food the towns produced almost nothing for the
peasants. The urban areas as a whole lived as a parasite on
the rural areas. After the land reform, the producing peasant
got his rightful compensation for his labour (or at least for
most of it), peasant incomes grew, food prices automatically
raised and the previous imbalance in favour of the urban
dwellers turned in favour of the peasants. Still unable to
produce goods for the increasing demands in rural I areas,
the lower classes of the urban population are those who most
intensively will feel the cost of change. With no or little
access to manufactured goods, and due to lack of social
security, which many may feel under the present
circumstances, peasants are reluctant to sell their surplus.
Their new economic position, with reference to control over
land and produce, permits them to sell a smaller surplus....

The new imbalance between urban and rural areas implies a
transfer of the hunger, and maybe famine, from the
countryside to the towns, and a transfer of money from the
towns to the countryside, where banking is non existent (or,
when banks are available, peasants tend to mistrust them).
Unless consumer goods (specifically salt, sugar, oil,
clothes) and agricultural implements, all preferably locally
made, are offered the peasants, this state will continue and
will in fact mean a loss of both health and money....

Grain stocks, especially of wheat, maize and barley, are
now rapidly declining, which results in lack of food for
non-peasant consumption and in increasing prices of grain.
This decrease in the exchange value of money hits primarily
the vulnerable majority of the non-peasants, namely the
lumpen-proletariate, the permanent, seasonal and daily
labourers, and the poorer part of the petty-bourgeoisie. The
results are malnourishment, in some cases undernourishment,
and in extreme cases famine. The upper and higher brackets of
the middle classes manage to satisfy their demands by
hoarding of grain, which, together with the inevitable
emergence of a widespread black market, further aggravates
the supply of food for the urban poor-now more alienated from
the basic necessities than ever before. [3]

The famine of 1978 was severe but not comparable to the
disaster of five years earlier. Again, this year, there are
reports of famine in the Horn of Africa, particularly in
Ethiopia. An international charity organization, World Vision,
even claims-an exaggeration-that one-fifth of Ethiopia's
population is threatened with death due to drought (the same kind
of reports were made by others in 1978 and proved to be
exaggerations). But more important is the fact that the drought
would not have had the same impact on food production if the
basic causes had not been present. However, an important factor,
one which is mentioned in the World Vision report, is the
ravaging effect of the wars on the supply of food. This effect
was also predicted in 1977, when war was the dominant factor in
the economy.

WARS AND FAMINE

In 1977 resources in the form of capital, manpower, and means
of transportation were allocated primarily to the various wars in
Ethiopia. This discussion will be limited to manpower and
transportation, to see the effects on food production.

"The local and regional disturbances lead to a withdrawal
of manpower from agricultural production: peasants are forced to
flee before the enemies, others are recruited in the local cadres
[of the many thousands of peasant associations] or in the
national militia [a huge army of recruited peasants, who fought
the various external enemies] " (3). The withdrawal of
manpower from agriculture implied a decrease in food production.
Under certain fairly realistic assumptions (constant peasant
labour productivity, an increase of between 5 and 10 per cent in
peasant food intake after the land reform, and a mobilization of
some 5 per cent of the productive male peasants), it was
calculated that the marketed amount of grain per capita (i.e. per
non-producer) decreased by some 25-35 per cent. "In order to
balance this loss, the average peasant labour productivity has to
increase by some 10-13%, which corresponds to an additional
labour time of 1-1.5 hours per day during the peak seasons
(ploughing, sowing, weeding, harvesting, threshing and
marketing). It is not realistic to expect the peasants to
increase their labour time that much: first, simply because they
already work some 10-12 hours daily during the peak seasons, and
second, because it is not in their interest to do so" (3;
see the reference to "the Ethiopian scissors" above).

This withdrawal of manpower later proved to be an important
factor in explaining the food shortage not only in towns but in
certain rural areas as well.

Moreover, due to the wars, there were difficulties in
importing new trucks to renew the fleet, and at the same time the
military demand for civilian trucks increased. Although a
government decree of September 1977 said that 35 per cent of all
means of transport from the port should be used for emergency
grain and fertilizers, this rule could not possibly be followed;
most of the transports had to concern direct military activities.

The gravity of the problem is obvious, not least manifested in
the congestion of goods in the port of Assab [the main harbour by
the Red Sea]..... The lack of sufficient transport facilities may
turn out to be a decisive factor in a coming famine. Transport of
agricultural implements, like fertilizers and seeds, and
transports from Assab of imported grain, of grain from surplus
areas to central stores, and of emergency grain to deficit rural
areas will all be affected. [3]

An example of the problems of transportation in 1977 was the
effect on the distribution of fertilizer. The amount of
fertilizer dispatched went down by almost 16,000 tons from 1976
to 1977. This may have caused a production decrease of as much as
90,000-100,000 tons of grain. Only about a third of the requested
fertilizer was dispatched in 1977. The figure for seeds was even
lower.

Here only some of the links between the wars and the
nutritional condition of the people are mentioned. Taking all the
factors into account, it wasn't difficult to predict the famine
of 1978. Irrespective of the weather that year, the impact of the
wars was sufficient to cause disaster.

CONCLUSION

The examples show that, in the particular case of Ethiopia,
hunger and famine during, say, the last two decades have been
basically "man-made." Of course, this does not imply a
denial of the fact that the extremely bad weather conditions
during the last years were important direct causes of the
insufficient amount of food produced within the country. The
examples are of such a nature that their validity can be extended
to many other third-world countries and to other periods of time.
Thus, the examples should not be interpreted as peculiar to
Ethiopia.

Finally, it should also be stressed that, whereas famine was
ignored and even denied by representatives of the imperial
government prior to 1974, food aid within Ethiopia today is
comparatively effective thanks to the work of the Ethiopian
Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC). The success of the
RRC in avoiding disasters depends, however, to a large extent on
international emergency aid and external supply of food in
sufficient quantities.